200M wireless, 2M wired. Reliance just signed up 100M 4G subscribers in six months; India is likely to pass the U.S. in broadband connections by the end of the year. About 15M of those have DSL, mostly from government owned BSNL & MTNL. Bharti, which is the fourth largest telco in the world, has just connected DSL customer two million. The current offering is VDSL, which they sell as the misleading, "up to 100 megabits." I haven't found any evidence of vectoring nor a breakdown of actual speeds or distances. Based on the British experience, that means most customers will get 10 megabits to 50 megabits. They call it V-Fiber, a marketer's fantasy.

Reliance Jio is currently running fiber home, designed for a gig but apparently mostly sold at 100 megabits.

Ambani has one of the world's larger fiber networks, including a major share in international cables, in order to backhaul their $20B 4G network. There are plenty of affluent highrises close to Reliance fiber, presumably inexpensive to connect. It's a natural strategy but they haven't released any subscriber or homes passed figures.

For the last ten years, Indian Ministers have promised remarkable increases in their broadband subscriber counts. The first few times, I reported enthusiastically. Since then, I've waited to see whether they deliver. None have.

UT Starcom won promises of large DSLAM orders from BSNL by bidding below cost. They took several years of losses on the bid and never reached breakeven volume. I don't know who is supplying Bharti. Nor do I have basic information- homes passed, actual speeds, average customer usage, and more. I'm also only guessing it's non-vectored VDSL.

Reliance is offering 10 meg+ 4G wireless. $7.40 buys 4 gigabytes of LTE with unlimited calls, unlimited SMS, and unlimited data between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. That's actually enough for a modest user who doesn't watch much video or downloads it overnight. $22.25 brings that to 20 gig, enough for most people who don't watch video or do much downloading.

Wireless capacity is increasing 5-10X in the coming years and will bring the caps to more reasonable levels.

Airtel crosses two million home broadband VDSL customers mark

Rolls out ‘Airtel Surprises’ for all home broadband customers to mark the milestone

New Delhi, February 6, 2017: Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s largest telecommunications services provider, today rolled out ‘Airtel Surprises’ for its home broadband customers offering them free additional data and content benefits within their existing plans. This is a special gesture by the Company to mark the two million home broadband subscriber milestone.

With free additional data from ‘Airtel Surprises’, customers can add to their digital experience by doing much more online and enjoy exciting content curated by Airtel, at no extra cost. To avail the offers of ‘Airtel Surprises’, customers have to just log on to www.airtel.in/broadbandsurprises and unlock their ‘surprise’.

All existing Airtel home broadband customers will get free additional monthly data top-up with their existing broadband plans at no extra cost. Customers can also enjoy free access to Airtel Movies, which has a collection of over 10,000 popular Hollywood & Bollywood movies, premium TV shows across a host of genres.

Hemanth Kumar Guruswamy, CEO – Homes, Bharti Airtel (India) said “We are happy to cross this milestone of 2 million customers, further consolidating our leadership as the second largest player in the fixed broadband sector in India. For us, our customers are at the heart of everything we do and therefore we are delighted to bring the latest ‘Airtel Surprises’ for them in celebration of our achievement and their trust on us. With these additional benefits our customers will be able to do much more with their existing plans.”

Leading the market with cutting edge technology and innovations, Airtel continues to strengthen its product offerings and service offerings. With the recent launch of “V-Fiber”, Airtel enabled its customers to enjoy broadband speeds of up to 100 Mbps. Currently LIVE in Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bhopal and Indore, ‘V-Fiber’ deployment is part of Airtel’s network transformation program - Project Leap.

Airtel recently also introduced free unlimited local and STD calling on all its home broadband plans. Airtel has also gifted customers numerous irresistible offers with ‘My Home Rewards’ offering Airtel broadband homes additional data of 5GB free every month for every Airtel postpaid and/or digital TV (DTH) connection in their home/family.

About Bharti Airtel Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 17 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 3 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed home broadband, DTH, enterprise services including national & international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services and mobile commerce. Bharti Airtel had over 364 million customers across its operations at the end of December 2016. To know more please visit, www.airtel.com